Based on Natalie Robins'
non-fiction book, Savage Grace tells the tragic story of Barbara Baekeland, a
middle-class woman who married into the Bakelite plastics fortune, but allowed
her insecurities to poison her familial relationships and lead to murder.
There's no better actress to play her than Julianne Moore, whose work in Far
From Heaven, Safe,
and The Hours
reveals a talent for suffocated housewives, especially of the upper-crust
Eisenhower-era variety. Her exceptionally nuanced performance brings a measure
of compassion to a monstrous woman, revealing her heartbreaks and
contradictions, all tied to a deep vulnerability that goes hand-in-glove with
her pathological behavior. Savage Grace should have the force of Greek tragedy,
but Kalin's chamber drama feels curiously stifling and flat, and Moore's
volatile turn isn't enough to quicken its pulse.
Draped in heavy period
trappings, the film opens in late-'40s Manhattan, where Barbara and her distant
husband Brooks (Stephen Dillane) have just welcomed their boy Tony (played as
an adult by Eddie Redmayne) into high society. Stung by her husband's cold
indifference, Barbara tries to play the happy homemaker and social director,
but she has trouble fitting in, and her failures often manifest in embarrassing
public outbursts. As time goes on, she clings desperately to her son, and their
intimate, dysfunctional connection wreaks havoc on his development. Once the
action shifts to Spain, Tony has grown disaffected and sexually confused, drawn
into his mother's web as his father cavorts openly with pretty young
gold-digger Elena Anaya.
Rather than condense
Robins' sprawling book, Kalin (Swoon) and screenwriter Howard Rodman make the
seemingly wise decision to chop the chronology into a series of pertinent
vignettes. Trouble is, Kalin's direction is so arch and diffuse that the films
borders on incoherent at times, lurching from one point in time to the next
without much emotional continuity. It also doesn't help that Redmayne and
Dillane are nowhere near Moore's equals, both leaning too hard on effete
mannerisms while seeming undernourished and vacant by comparison. Then again,
maybe that's the intent: When in the presence of a woman like Barbara Baekeland—and
an actress like Moore—lesser souls are doomed to wither.